Archive

Quotes

An appeal to the reason of the people has never been known to fail in the long run.

—James Russell Lowell, c. 1865

Television has made dictatorship impossible, but democracy unbearable.

—Shimon Peres, 1995

All the ills of democracy can be cured by more democracy.

—Al Smith, 1933

What experience and history teach is this—that nations and governments have never learned anything from history or acted upon any lessons they might have drawn from it.

—Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, 1830

It is impossible to tell which of the two dispositions we find in men is more harmful in a republic, that which seeks to maintain an established position or that which has none but seeks to acquire it.

—Niccolò Machiavelli, c. 1515

I’m president of the United States, and I’m not going to eat any more broccoli!

—George H. W. Bush, 1990

The spirit of liberty is the spirit which is not too sure it is right.

—Judge Learned Hand, 1944

I work for a government I despise for ends I think criminal.

—John Maynard Keynes, 1917

Envy is the basis of democracy.

—Bertrand Russell, 1930

O citizens, first acquire wealth; you can practice virtue afterward.

—Horace, c. 8 BC

It is a certain sign of a wise government and proceeding, when it can hold men’s hearts by hopes, when it cannot by satisfaction.

—Francis Bacon, 1625

Sic semper tyrannis! The South is avenged.

—John Wilkes Booth, 1865

People revere the Constitution yet know so little about it—and that goes for some of my fellow senators.

—Robert Byrd, 2005